Mark Copier | The Grand Rapids PressGarbage is piled in the Chef Container refuse sorting and processing area. The Holland company has started an expansion project that will triple the size of the current recycling operation.

LAKETOWN TOWNSHIP — When Chef Container opened in 2002 with only four employees, the Holland-area trash and recycling company had a goal for where it wanted to be well into the future.

“One of the original goals of the company was, by year 10, to have enough growth to do our second phase expansion,” company associate Matt Biolette said.

The company was so confident about those future plans, it included that plan in its initial application to the Michigan Department of Environment Quality to be approved as a licensed waste stream facility.

A decade later, Chef Container is making good on its early goals.

The company has broken ground on the expansion of its Westshore Recycling and Transfer Station on 144th Avenue, just west of 60th Street. The facility will multiply the firm’s size fourfold from 6,400-square-feet to more than 27,000-square-feet.

“We’re proud to be able to grow with our community and allow our customers to grow with us,” company founder and owner Sean Steele said. “That is great benefit to everyone.”

The project is slated for completion by May 1, and is expected to add 10 new jobs to Chef’s present workforce of 40 employees, Biolette said.

Chef has been able to grow by securing contracts with a number of municipalities and businesses to handle garbage and recycling. The company uses a single-stream collection method where it collects both trash and recyclable materials in one stop.

“We’re looking at multiple agreements to bring recycling in from other counties around Michigan, as well as other municipal contracts we’re bidding on,” Biolette said.

The city of Holland earlier this year voted to approve a new seven-year, $7.53 million contract with Chef, which has provided trash and recycling services to the city since 2005. It’s the longest deal the city had approved since it began contracting out its waste service hauling in 1992. City officials say they’ve been pleased with the service residents have received.

“It’s been a much more streamlined program and it’s eliminated a lot of complaints we had gotten,” said Mary Ann Hensley, the city’s solid waste and recycling education coordinator.

She added the expansion will make it possible for Chef to accept more recyclable material that they have not been able to accept in the past.

Also in July, Allegan County approved a five-year contract with Chef to collect recyclable materials from eight collection sites around the county, a move the company says will save the county more than $123,000 over the life of the contract.

The company also has contracts for trash and recycling pickup with the city of Saugatuck and Laketown Township, and is in discussions with neighboring Ottawa County on getting involved with their resource recovery program, Biolette said.

In the private sector, the company provides recycling services for Haworth Inc. and Herman Miller Inc., Biolette said.

When completed, the expanded Chef facility will be able to process 300 percent more recyclable materials than before. At capacity, the material would fill 1,820 semitrailers, which would be long enough to extend from Holland State Park to Byron Center each year, Biolette said.